


Apprehension

by agatestones



Category: Justified
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-29
Updated: 2012-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-02 16:51:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agatestones/pseuds/agatestones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The number of times Raylan had to ring that bell, and knock on the door (steel-reinforced), and on the window (double-pane, but not security glass), he was definitely in the middle of waking Tim Gutterson up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apprehension

If Rachel hadn't of been out of town, Raylan would not have had to bother Tim about it, and that was the cause of what ensued. Because when you are a fugitive, even when it's a fugitive from the FBI, you don't exactly have the leisure to choose your allies. It was Art or Tim, and on the whole Tim was less likely to start yelling. 

As far as Raylan could tell. Withering sarcasm he could take, just not yelling.

If Tim didn't want to be woke up at 2 in the morning, then he shouldn't of got himself listed in the phone book. Gutterson's not that common a name, not outside Minnesota. Raylan drove to the right neighborhood and parked two streets away and cased the area like he was planning an invasion. Not a lot of people up at 2 in the morning on a Tuesday, though some motion lights went on and a few dogs barked far-off. None in the complex Tim lived in, which had all its unit doors facing a well-lit central plaza type of area. You couldn't see Tim's front door from the street. A sniper's likely to think of sightlines like that.

Raylan strode right up to Tim's door like he knew where he was going and hit the doorbell. It was quiet enough out he could hear the bell inside.

The number of times Raylan had to ring that bell, and knock on the door (steel-reinforced), and on the window (double-pane, but not security glass), he was definitely in the middle of waking Tim Gutterson up. But after about five minutes the blinds twitched and Raylan decided it was time to start talking.

"Come on, Tim, this is serious. I got to talk with you."

Tim did not seem to agree. Anyway, he didn't open the door.

"I'm sorry about the hour, okay? But I wouldn't come knocking if it wasn't serious," said Raylan, loud but not yelling yet. "And no, I have not had anything to drink."

The blinds twitched again, like they were being let go.

Raylan did not have the time for this. "Listen, you want me out here talking through the door like a jealous boyfriend or you want me to explain why there's a warrant with my name on it in the pleasant confines of your own living room?"

The door banged open fast. Raylan liked to think that nobody got the drop on him but a long skinny white arm reached out from the darkness and grabbed the front of his shirt and _pulled_ and he didn't even have the time to reach for his weapon. Probably just as well. Tim would not be very willing to help if Raylan shot him first, and anyway it's always a bad idea to try and aim your weapon when you're off-balance.

He stumbled over the door lintel and caught himself on the arm of a couch he could barely see and then the door banged shut behind him. The blinds cut long white lines all over everything, not bright enough to show much of what else was in the pleasant confines of that living room. Raylan stood up. Tim was behind him, breath coming fast, and he turned on the lights as Raylan turned to face him. His service weapon was in his hand, pointed toward the floor. He wasn't wearing a stitch except a pair of boxer shorts, which according to the tag right below Tim's navel were on both backwards and inside-out.

"Hey," said Raylan, hands out like you do for a spooked horse. Tim's eyes were wide and he had red marks on the side of his face from wrinkled sheets. His old dogtags clinked on his chest to the galloping rhythm of his heart.

"The fuck is going on," Tim breathed. "The fuck are you doing here."

"Like I said outside, I got a situation," Raylan told him. "You want I should make coffee or something so you can make yourself presentable?"

Tim opened his mouth and then he blinked and closed it again. His service weapon tapped against his thigh. "You need me to go someplace?"

"Eventually," said Raylan. "But we can talk here first."

"What do you want."

Raylan considered going to make coffee whether the man asked for it or not. But Tim was the one with a weapon out, so Raylan didn't. "Well, the Feebs swore out a warrant on me couple hours ago, and I been ducking 'em for now. But I got to come in, and I figure that'll go easier with somebody on the inside. You're the one all buddy-buddy with our sister agency."

"Raylan Fucking Givens," he hissed, "it couldn't wait till morning?!"

"No, Tim, it can't. Fella shot at me in the street an hour ago." He sighed and sat down on the couch's arm. "They're not exactly looking for a clean arrest, here." 

It was a relief to see Tim open up his weapon and clear it, because that meant he wasn't going to shoot Raylan with it, and that meant he was starting to think. He took three steps and he was in the kitchen and he put the gun and the clip on top the fridge. Then he got a good hold of the freezer door and rested his head against it. "What in the hell did you do now?"

Raylan had done many things. Some of them were even probably illegal. But for once he could honestly report that he hadn't done a goddamned thing, and it was most likely some asshole with a grudge and delusions of grandeur. He was opening his mouth to say so when he heard a noise over his shoulder. Run-of-the-mill kind of noise, somebody clumsy with a door and maybe barked a set of shins in the dark. Either the FBI done clumb in a federal marshal's bedroom window, or Tim wasn't sleeping alone.

Tim Gutterson had himself a lady-friend. He stood there in the kitchen with a sick expression on his face.

"Well Jesus Christ, I'm not your mother." Raylan chuckled. But as he did so, he heard the lady-friend bang into something else and swear in a very low voice. A voice much lower than was generally typical among ladies. Tim's eyeballs were interrogating the linoleum. Raylan paused and cocked his head and and then laughed a little bit to himself. He raised his voice. "I'm fixing to make some coffee, you want some?"

He stepped around Tim in his own kitchen and rummaged around till he found some coffee filters that fit the machine on the counter. Behind him Tim stood stiff and nervy but after a little while of Raylan opening one cabinet after another and not finding any coffee he got out of the way and opened the fridge door. He pulled out a coffee can and handed it to Raylan. "You even have a fridge where you live?"

"I call it appliance-free living," Raylan told him. "The leftovers don't last, but by golly there ain't no dishes to wash."

The lines around Tim's eyes came together like blinds going up and he stopped looking like Raylan was about to discover a dime bag inside the coffeemaker. Which was an improvement. Raylan measured out the grounds for three cups of coffee with his back to the bedroom door. Tim stood next to him facing in the other direction and leaned his head back till his adam's apple stuck out like he'd swallowed an ice cube. He was paying a lot of attention to whatever he was looking at, and whatever he was looking at paid some attention to him. Raylan spent a good minute fussing with the controls of the coffeemaker, which truth be told only had the one switch on it.

Behind him a pair of feet shuffled on the carpet. Out of the corner of his eye Raylan saw Tim nod, and decided he was allowed to turn around. "Raylan Givens, U.S. marshal service," he said, and tipped back his hat. "Sorry for interrupting your evening, sir."

Tim Gutterson's lady-friend was not a lady. He was a man, with thick dark hair and bushy dark eyebrows and the kind of guy that had to shave twice a day. He had on jeans and an unbuttoned plaid shirt and his hair was all flat on one side and sticking up on the other side, like a little kid. He wore a small gold cross at his throat.

The man's caution was admirable. He rolled his eyes over to Tim before he said anything. "This happen most nights?"

"If it did, I'd shoot myself," said Tim, and came away from the fridge. He stepped around the dark-haired man and walked into his bedroom, which on the whole was a good thing, since he was going to have to put pants on to go talk to the FBI. The dark-haired man came into the kitchen, buttoning up his plaid shirt. He reached down a coffee cup like he knew where they belonged. He still hadn't introduced himself.

"You take cream?" Raylan asked.

"Milk," said the man. He looked Raylan up and down, a quick assessing little glance. He seemed like the kind of fella who did a lot of sizing up, but he didn't have the body language of law enforcement. "You're from Texas?"

"No, just my hat." Raylan gave a little nod and it worked; he got one back. "Service seemed to figure out I prefer warm climates. I was in Miami when they sent me back here as a punishment."

"Miami," said the man. The coffeemaker gurgled and finished up and Raylan poured off two cups. The man said, "Tim takes his black, five sugars."

"Army killed his taste buds, I guess," scoffed Raylan.

The man chuckled. "I was going to blame that on his growing up in rural Arkansas."

"You two done besmirching my character?" Tim asked, from the bedroom doorway. He had some pants on, and socks and shoes and a shirt too. He stalked into the kitchen, all testy, and that was at least a little better than the way he looked before. A man _should_ be testy, he gets woke up at two in the morning and asked to leave his boyfriend behind.

Raylan leaned on the counter and drank down coffee. He didn't have to say nothing, just let Tim and the boyfriend make up their mugs and drink from them all the while giving each other significant looks. It was just as well that Tim was not in the business of robbing banks, because subtle he was not. "If you'll excuse us," he said, and they both went back into the bedroom and shut the door.

Raylan was able not to hear any more than vague murmurs from the vicinity of the bedroom. They didn't take longer than it requires to finish a cup of coffee. Tim came back through the door with a baseball cap on backwards and his badge on his belt. He pulled his service weapon down from on top the fridge, reloaded it, and he was ready to go.

"He going to be okay if we leave him without a car?" Raylan asked, as he put his mug into the sink. He liked to think of himself as an adequate houseguest.

"I ain't going to be six hours do-si-doing you around with the FBI," said Tim. They went out the door and Tim locked it behind them.

It wasn't but ten minutes on the highway, and if Art was ever looking for another method of reproach, the silent treatment in the cab of an F-150 was about as effective as any official reprimand. Raylan ground his teeth and kept his peace, considering he was the one who'd been banging on doors in the middle of the night.

Tim pulled over at an all-night gas station and made a couple of calls at a pay phone. He came back with a pack of Slim Jims and some Mountain Dew. "You owe me six dollars and forty-one cents," he said, and climbed back into the cab of the truck. "Not counting mileage."

"I'll write you an IOU," said Raylan.

Back on the highway, Tim let those phone calls percolate for a few minutes. "Feebs told me Raylan Givens has mafia ties."

"And by 'ties' they mean I arrested a couple of 'em over the years?" And killed a few, but none that wasn't asking for it.

Tim chuckled. "Not exactly."

That was the end of talking about that. In the absence of other factors, mafia ties are not sufficient justification for shooting at a man in the street. It wasn't that Raylan was afraid of facing Art with a federal warrant against his name, it was that he was afraid Art would go old-school on somebody and hurt himself trying to beat down people half his age. The man's knees were not what they had used to be.

Clearly Tim was thinking along the same lines.

"You going to tell Art?" Tim asked.

"That I'm liable to be arrested? No, I'm going to let you tell him that."

Tim said nothing. Raylan waited him out about a minute, till he was afraid Tim would break his teeth chewing that Slim Jim. 

"About that other thing, I seem to recall his considerable impatience with the shit I got in my life."

"You live in a goddamn soap opera, is why."

"Son, I just caught you pants down with a claims adjuster from Cincinnati, you think your life's not a soap opera?"

The lines at Tim's temples bunched up and he kinda smiled out the side window. After a little while he said, "He's _from_ Milwaukee, and he's a regional manager at a beer distributor. Five months he won't stay over on a weeknight. First time I can talk him into it, and you show up? Probly thinks you _are_ a jealous boyfriend."

Raylan gave that the chuckle it deserved and then needled, "You duly reporting any free samples as gifts to a federal agent?"

"One beer at a time, it don't meet the dollar minimum for reporting." Tim put a little satisfied smile on his face like he'd outsmarted somebody. Raylan being the only other somebody in earshot, he took a bit of exception to the idea he'd been outsmarted.

"He even know you're a marshal till tonight?"

Tim made a noise. "Well I don't know, Raylan, maybe he thinks I got that badge out a cereal box."

"All right, all right." Raylan peered gloomily out the windshield. "You tell Rachel?"

"No I ain't told her," Tim grumbled. A car coming in the other direction lit up the cab of the pickup, and the shadows crawled across both their faces and it was gone.

"Do me a favor, will you?" Tim gave him the stink-eye and Raylan revised his statement. "Do me _another_ favor. Tell Rachel. Do it soon. Comes the day she finds out, and then she finds out I knew before she did, she ain't going to kick your ass, she's going to kick _my_ ass into the next county."

"You could stand a good ass-kicking," said Tim. But he kept his eyes on the road and didn't provide an opinion about telling Rachel one way or the other.

He'd managed to avoid mentioning the fella's name, despite them standing around drinking coffee together in the middle of the night. He hadn't mentioned the name of the beer distributor, or whether its home base was Louisville or Lexington or some other place out of state. Raylan still didn't know nothing about nothing, and that was as Tim wanted it.

"I don't think Art would be so bad --"

"Can we spare a moment of thought for the situation at hand, please?" Tim slapped his hand on the steering wheel. "We still got to get you into federal custody without any blood spilt."

Raylan looked over at him. Tim was sitting there in the driver's seat with a baseball cap on backwards and a frown on his face. He was a man generally disinclined to hats except for one type of event, and that was when he set up his sniper rifle. It was in the locker behind them, in a double-locked briefcase; Raylan had seen him put it away there more than once. Both of them wore their service weapons clipped to their belts. It wasn't even conscious, but more like not leaving the house without any socks on. 

"Well shit," said Raylan.

"I am pleased to find that you have discovered the gravity of the situation," said Tim. He flipped on his turn signal and angled into the left-hand turn lane. Wherever it was they were going to meet up with his FBI friend, they were most of the way there. "There's body armor in the back should fit you okay."

It was nice of Tim not to mention that snipers generally went for a head-shot, and generally got one too. Raylan shook his head. "You trust this FBI fella?"

"I trust her," said Tim. 

"All right, let's get this over with." Raylan scanned the parking lot they were pulling into and concluded that an upper floor of the garage, in an interior lane with no sightlines to the outside, would be the safest place for a prisoner transfer. Considering he was the prisoner. Without his saying anything Tim drove his truck up the garage ramp. Great minds were obviously thinking alike. They came up to the third level and the headlights raked across a parked car. "You just going to hand me off and go home to the man of your dreams?" asked Raylan.

Tim pulled into a space and shut off the engine. "That's the plan," he said. 

A woman stepped out from behind the parked car. She was in jeans and an Arizona State t-shirt, and looked like somebody was going to owe her free coffee for a long, long time.

"Don't you confess to nothing I wouldn't confess to," admonished Tim, as they opened their doors and climbed down from the cab.

Raylan eyed him for a second over the hood of the truck, and then turned his attention to the woman who was going to be his arresting officer. 

"Ain't nothing to confess," Raylan told her, and put up his hands.


End file.
